Alameda Point: removing the powers of elected officials?

As mentioned on Friday, at tonight’s meeting of the ARRA, the public body that oversees Alameda Point and it development (it’s an agency that is separate from the City Council, but is currently comprised only of the 5 members of the City Council), under “Executive Director Communications” (the ED is Alameda’s Interim City Manager, Ann Marie Gallant), there is an item titled:

There are two big issues with this presentation. First, it is that it is not in compliance with the Brown Act. The noticed discussion is about Board Composition, but the presentation covers leasing strategies, Strategic Alliances, Asset, Financial resource, Asset Management, etc. As this is a presentation on a key issue to a public body. The agenda has to be clear, with 72 hours notice, about what is being covered at the meeting, and in this case it’s very specific: “Board Composition: Options for New Structure” not “everything under the sun that relates to Alameda Point.”

The presentation and resulting conversation cannot be given without violating state open government laws.

Second, the Ann Marie Gallant is changing the rules with this. Back on September 1, when this presentation was given, it came to the council as an action item for direction (Video Here). Gallant essentially read the slides (starts at 1:55 for about one minute) and presented the idea of expanding the ARRA Board as “something the Board might want to consider” going further to say that this is “one of the things that we’d like to evaluate and possibly ask the [ARRA] Board’s consideration and get your policy feedback on.”

Nice and clear, this is an idea that the Interim City Manager is kicking around, but hasn’t given it any real thought, and at some point in the future, it will come to the council for feedback. Gallant supports this statement two more times during the September meeting (at 2:19 and again 2:48) , telling the council that she’ll be bringing back this (and other) issues for full discussion and “policy direction.” The ARRA, all of whom were in attendance, gave absolutely no comment on the issue.

So now the issue is coming back, BUT, this isn’t an item for discussion or direction. It’s an Executive Director Communication, which legally means the ARRA cannot act on it (or come to consensus), they can simply give individual direction to staff, but once more than two of them do, they step into a huge problem.

Interestingly, the non-discussed reconfiguration from September is now called the “original concept” and there is a “revised concept” as if there has been any discussion or direction given on this topic. There hasn’t, at least not publicly, and it’s another indication that this issue is jumping the rails of public participation.

While a rational person might say “hey, this is just ideas being presented for some future discussion,” they would be wrong. The last slide in the new presentation lists an an implementation goal of “January 2011″ (page 20), meaning coming back to the ARRA with a proposal to vote on in six weeks. Yet the ARRA will not have had any discussion on, or given any policy direction about, the overall idea, how they would like to see it move forward (if at all). This is a significant change to the way Alameda Point is developed, one that changes the balance of decision making away from elected officials on towards private individuals who will have “expertise” in the area of development, which will quickly mean “vested interest.”

The idea of creating a body, where a minority of the elected officials in Alameda can make policy for the development of 1/3 of our island by joining with non-electeds is a huge decision, one that needs public discussion. Yet both presentations 9/2010 and 11/2010 were not available to the public before the meeting in which they were discussed. The public is not aware of these discussions, the issue is being agendized in a way that precludes the ARRA Board from meaningfully participating in the process, and yet again, our City Leadership is running full-bore with a barely thought out plan.

This is not an item to rush. The ARRA needs to table the item until January, when the issue can come back for a real policy discussion and direction. There is no reason to hurry this. It is not time-sensitive, but it is incredibly important.